


The Bloodiness of Your Heart

by elithewho



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Blow Jobs, Coming In Pants, F/M, Murder Mystery, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 13:44:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10361772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elithewho/pseuds/elithewho
Summary: Detective Percival Graves of the NYPD has a serial killer on his hands and a very friendly, very strange new neighbor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> The idea for this came from Greenie Fright Night AU and went from there. As you will see, this is literally nothing like Fright Night. All the love and thanks to Morgan for the edits, ideas and all the support <3 
> 
> Title is from _The Blind Assassin_ by Margaret Atwood

It was snowing thickly and well past midnight when Graves arrived home from work. He felt burnt out, exhausted, that hollow feeling of an abandoned building. He’d been awake for nearly 36 hours straight, slogging through endless hours of CCTV footage from bodegas and street corners, until Picquery finally forced him to go home.

“You look like hell,” she’d told him and he’d only grunted. _Just one more hour_ , he thought. Just one more tape and he could call it a night. 

She had actually threatened him with disciplinary action to make him go home and get some sleep.

“Working too hard isn’t against the code of conduct,” he’d told her sourly and she smirked at him.

“Refusing to follow orders is.”

Graves had grudgingly complied. He didn’t know what good it would do. He could see it now: he’d sleep fitfully, plagued by nightmares of blood and bodies piling up unchecked. The papers were already calling him The Central Park Vampire which Graves hated, that catchy, blithe moniker that recalled Twilight and Count Chocula more than the mutilated young victims with names and families. Hobbies, jobs, dreams and ambitions. The papers didn’t care for the victims as much as the compelling mystery of the killer and Graves was sick of the whole business.

Once he was inside his dark, quiet apartment, Graves shrugged out of his black overcoat, the collar folded up to shield his face from the wind and cold. He knew he was lucky to be able to afford such a nice place, but he hardly spent any time there. Two years later and it was still undecorated and plain, the look of a college dorm room more than anything. Albeit a very expensive one.

He had a hot shower to chase away the chill in his bones and then squinted at himself in the fogged up mirror. He eyes bore huge, purplish shadows, his jaw was silvered with gray stubble like a spiky layer of frost. It felt like a few days ago that he’d only spotted a few grays here and there, but the enemy was rapidly encroaching. Graves frowned at his reflection but only turned away. He didn’t have the energy to shave.

But he knew he couldn’t sleep either. His mind was still at the station, among the autopsy photos and logs of each victim’s every movement in the hours before their deaths. A huge spidery map of possible connections between the four of them. They were different ages, races and genders, from different parts of the city, all brought to the same place by the sprawling park and then killed in the same way. Apparently attacked from behind, their throats torn as if by an animal and then hidden out of sight in the bushes. The whole thing was frustrating beyond belief and Graves couldn’t seem to make any progress. 

There he sat, eating day-old Chinese takeout and nursing a beer, staring into space, his mind overrun with blood and gore and their cold, gray faces on a slab in the morgue. The shock of a knock at his door made him spill lo mein noodles down his shirt.

Cursing, Graves wiped at his front and went to see who the fuck would be knocking on his door at one in the morning. He peered through the peephole and saw an unfamiliar blonde woman holding a tray covered in cellophane. She was smiling hopefully and gave a little wave. Utterly confused, Graves cracked open the door.

“Hi! My name’s Queenie, I’m your new neighbor,” she said cheerfully. Her skin was incredibly pale, her golden hair styled into a bouncy mass of curls. She wore a pink dress that looked rather old-fashioned to Graves’s eyes but he wouldn’t call himself an expert on trendy women’s clothes. Most of all it looked far too thin for the current weather.

“It’s one in the morning,” he told her, wondering if perhaps he had fallen asleep after all and it was now day time.

“Oh, I know,” she said in that same bubbly voice. “But I saw you were awake and I was awake, since I work nights anyway and I thought I’d pop in and introduce myself.”

She held up the tray hopefully. Under the plastic, Graves could see brownies cut into squares. 

“They’re homemade,” she said cheerfully.

Graves strongly considered telling her to go away but then he thought better of it. He was awake after all, and hadn’t been planning on sleeping any time soon. Maybe she would be a much needed distraction from the case dogging his every thought.

“They look good,” he said truthfully, stepping back to let her know she was welcome inside.

But she didn’t move, her pale eyes wide. 

“Invite me in?” she said in a bright voice.

“Oh, um, come on in,” Graves muttered and she bounced over the threshold. “My name’s Graves,” he said, leading her to the austere kitchen. “Percival Graves.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Percival,” she said, laying her tray of brownies on the kitchen island, gently removing the plastic. He noticed she had a faint Brooklyn accent.

“Did you just move here?” he asked conversationally, pulling out those old, deeply ingrained manners from within himself. “To Manhattan, I mean.”

“Oh, I move all over,” she said vaguely, with a little flick of her hand. “But I just moved to this building, yes. It’s a nice area.”

Graves nodded, taking in her appearance. The thin silk of her dress was certainly not suited for January. It looked like a costume from an old movie. She must have seen him staring because she caught his eye and gave him a saucy little wink. Graves stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his NYPD sweats and hoped he wasn’t suddenly blushing like an idiot.

“Ah, do you want a drink?” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. He was suddenly aware of his unkempt appearance, unshaven jaw and ragged t-shirt from his academy days, now stained with Chinese takeout.

Queenie nodded enthusiastically and Graves provided her with a beer, which was all he had to offer anyway. He opened the bottle for her and she took a tiny sip.

“Have a brownie,” she insisted, nudging the tray in his direction. “Old family recipe.”

He took one politely and as he bit into it, he had to admit it was delicious. Fudgey, chewy and just as a brownie should be.

“It’s good,” he told her after he swallowed and she beamed.

“I keep seeing you come and go at every hour of the day and night,” she said, leaning forward on the counter, cheek pillowed on her hand. “I thought you were a gangster or something.”

“No, I’m a –“

“A cop, yeah,” she said, finger landing on his chest where the NYPD logo was faded but still visible.

“Oh, right,” he muttered, feeling weirdly wrong-footed.

Queenie giggled, her finger lingering on his chest. Graves took another bite of his brownie. He wasn’t sure why she made him vaguely nervous. He was usually quite good at talking to people, it came with his job. But perhaps it was the late hour, the lack of sleep, the case still looming over him and the sliver of pale cleavage her dress put on display.

“Let’s sit,” she said, tossing her blonde curls from side to side.

“Yeah, OK,” Graves said, grabbing a second brownie.

“You’ve got a nice view,” she said as they settled on the couch and Graves reclaimed his beer. She was looking out at the dark of the city, a few thick snowflakes still drifting past, speckled with the hard glitter of streetlights and cars, flickering like sequins in the black. “I can’t see the park from my place.”

“Yeah, it’s good,” Graves agreed, thinking that the view was wasted on him, since he was hardly around to enjoy it.

She turned to look at him, her gray-green eyes bright, licking at her bottom lip as if in anticipation. Graves thought he knew what she was going to ask and he dreaded it.

“You don’t go out much, do you?” she asked, nudging a bit closer to him.

“Ah, yeah, I guess. No,” Graves managed to stutter out. He had expected her to launch into asking about The Central Park Vampire and how she read such-and-such a thing in the local rag and could he give her any inside info so she could gasp in delighted horror over the gory details.

“It’s just that I see you go out and in and it doesn’t look like it’s to anywhere fun,” she said, placing her beer on the coffee table. She had hardly drunk any of it. “Must be stressful.”

To that, Graves had to give a dry laugh. “Stressful. Yeah. For sure,” he muttered, taking a long pull from his beer.

“De-stressing is important,” Queenie said in a mock stern voice, and slid even closer to him, invading his personal space. Her small hands snaked over his shoulders, pinching them in a massaging motion.

“So I’ve heard,” Graves said, unsure how it had come to this. He had literally just met this woman and she was already giving him a massage on the couch. He felt oddly light-headed. He blamed the lack of sleep. 

Her hands were surprisingly cold, like she had just come in from outside. She was so close that he could smell her perfume, something old-fashioned and expensive like an older woman from his mother’s generation would wear. In the low fluorescent track lighting of his living room, her skin seemed to take on a gleaming, pearlescent quality, like there was no blood under the surface, just shimmering snow. 

“You’re very tense,” she said, voice low and close. He couldn’t feel the warmth of her breath, despite being near enough to send an odd shiver down his spine when she spoke.

“Yeah… they-they say that,” Graves mumbled, feeling dizzy. He really shouldn’t have let her in. He should have just gone to bed. 

Queenie giggled. Her thigh was pressed flush against his, their bodies side by side. She leaned in and Graves didn’t protest at all. Her lips were just as cold as her hands. She kissed him softly at first and then more forcefully, her hand pinching very high up on his thigh. He moaned into her mouth and she kissed him deeper. She tasted like the cold air when the snow was still falling, with the slightest tang of ash. Before he knew it she was in his lap, her pale thighs snug around his hips.

“It’s OK, honey,” she said breathily, lips closing over his ear, teeth nipping his lobe. 

Graves could only yelp in response. He felt curiously liquid, watery, like he couldn’t do anything but let her mold him with her body. He was used to warmth between a woman’s legs, but despite the pressure he felt on his straining erection, her body was cool as a marble statue. Still, he arched against her, a low groan in his throat. Her lips were on his pulse point, kissing and licking his neck as she pulled his head backward with a handful of hair, opening him to her. 

He squirmed and trembled beneath her, the intensity of sensation building, but his hands felt useless and numb, his head like a block of wood. She was doing more than kissing him now and he groaned as she sucked a bruise onto the tender skin below his ear.

“Oh, whoops,” she said softly, drawing back a fraction.

At first, Graves did not register any pain. Then he felt the slight sting of a fresh cut like he had nicked himself shaving and the light trickle of blood on his neck. He raised a hand to dab at it, no idea how he even got cut, but Queenie stopped him.

“Let me,” she said but instead of pressing her fingers to the wound, she pressed her mouth.

Graves gasped sharply as the pain bloomed, a sharp electric feeling as she sucked at the cut like she was giving him another hickey. He went to grab at her, to pull her off, but her hands were quicker. She grabbed him by both wrists, pinning him to the couch with alarming strength. He felt something razor sharp graze his skin where her lips touched him, sharp as a needle. But they didn’t press down, only teased the skin as she lapped at the blood trickling from his cut. 

Disturbingly, Graves was still hard. He twisted in her grip, her cold hands stronger than any handcuffs and Graves couldn’t understand how. He should have easily been able to break her grip. Instead, he bucked restlessly against her as she sucked ruthlessly at the cut, refusing to let it close. He could only arch his hips, grinding his aching cock against her body. He didn’t think she was wearing anything under her dress and it was only his sweat pants separating them. She was focused on his neck, letting him buck beneath her, holding him secure on the couch with seemingly very little effort. He could hear breathy, straining gasps and was sure they couldn’t be coming from him, but they must have been. He felt one of those razor sharp things drag against his skin, opening a new cut, blood welling to the surface with a burst of pain and Graves whimpered, his body tight as a spring. 

He felt feverishly hot, drowning in sensation as she shifted her hips, rolling against him. Graves whined, body going rigid as she sucked hard on his neck and with a shudder he came in his pants, hips stuttering as the onslaught of pleasure mingled with pain and his head filled with white noise.

He registered the warm stickiness in his pants and the creeping humiliation as Queenie licked daintily at his neck, her hands uncurling from around his wrists to stroke his shaking forearms. Graves could only lie there, feeling drained like a cracked egg, his head too fuzzy for rational thought.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Queenie said softly in his ear. “I’ll look after you.”

And Graves slipped into a consuming dark. 

 

The alarm was like a fire engine whine, ringing and ringing endlessly. Yet Graves could not manage to lift himself up to turn it off until it seemed to have been blaring for an eternity. He felt tremendously hungover, his head stuffy, throat dry, every limb aching. He rolled over, groaning as his muscles screamed in pain. He struggled to remember why he felt so lousy. He remembered having a beer and then… a visitor? 

Yes, he could remember her fuzzily now, his new neighbor. Kelsey? Quincy? She was blonde and she brought him brownies. After that was a blur, a haze of blackness that he could not extract meaning from. Graves rubbed his temple, grabbing his phone and seeing a huge collection of missed calls. Wonderful.

“Graves, where the hell are you?” Picquery barked into his voicemail and he winced. He’d never been late for work in his life. What the fuck happened?

He pulled himself up and into the bathroom. As he was washing his face, he touched his throat. There was a tender patch on his neck, but he couldn’t see any broken skin. Still, it felt like something had been there. But he didn’t have time to mull over that mystery. He threw on whatever clothes were in sight and some deodorant, crunching a handful of breath mints as he tore out the door.

The trains were all delayed because of the snow the night before, a mass of grumpy commuters surrounding him on the platform. He bought a steaming cup of dirt-flavored coffee and a stale pastry from a food cart outside his precinct and hustled inside.

Sergeant Picquery immediately summoned him to her office before he even got the chance to sit at his desk.

“This isn’t like you,” she said with a sigh. She appeared to have been on the verge of tearing into him but then actually took a second to look at him. In the glassy reflection of her office walls, Graves could see that he looked like shit.

“It won’t happen again,” he said sincerely. “I don’t – I was exhausted.”

“Of course you were,” she said, a little more kindly. “Lucky for us we don’t have another body on our hands. But the commissioner is up my ass and we need to be putting everything we have into this.”

“Of course,” he said, chest clenching.

He returned to his desk and the mass of work he had left behind the night before. His partner Tina appeared, dropping a huge stack of folders in front of him.

“Where’s the bus?” she said by way of greeting.

Graves only squinted blurrily at her.

“The bus that hit you on the way over?” she clarified with a half-smile.

Graves didn’t respond. Tina was always trying to be pals with him and like always, he wasn’t especially interested in being pals with anyone.

“What’s this?” was all he said, gesturing to the stack of folders.

“More tips,” she said with a deeply unenthused grimace. “We have no other leads,” she said to the look on Graves’s face.

“Of course,” he said with a sinking feeling. The hours of CCTV footage had yielded nothing. Interviewing every person the victims had ever met had yielded nothing.

“Looks like The Vampire must be this lady’s husband, since he’s such a jerk,” Tina remarked lightly as she opened the first folder, settling into her desk across from Graves.

“Don’t call him that,” Graves insisted, a fierce headache crawling up behind his eyes. “That insipid tabloid name.”

He was sure that Tina rolled her eyes at him but Graves ignored it. There was a lot of utterly useless information to wade through. But he had to do something. He couldn’t just do nothing. He scratched at his throat idly, the irritated skin under his ear prickling.

 

That night Graves returned to his place feeling even worse than when he woke up. His eyes were strained from hours of pouring over hotline tips and then more CCTV footage, going over interviews to search for connections. All as fruitless as everything before it.

And it wasn’t as though the rest of the city stopped killing each other. It’s just that gangbangers and bodega shootings weren’t sexy front page headlines like The Vampire of Central Park. 

Graves was home for barely twenty minutes, still in his grimy work clothes, staring blankly into the depressingly empty fridge when there was a knock at the door. His blonde neighbor was waving on the other side again.

“Hey there, Percival,” she said cheerfully, curls bouncing around her pale face. “I hope you’re feeling better. I wanted to check up on you.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said automatically. He gestured for her to come in. She was wearing another thin, silky dress that was totally unsuited for the season or his chilly apartment and had a bulging canvas tote bag over one shoulder.

“You got sick so suddenly last night, I was worried,” she said, an attractive little crease appearing between her eyes.

“Did I?” Graves muttered. The night after she had arrived was still a confused blur.

Queenie nodded gravely and then pressed the back of her curiously cold hand against his forehead. Graves swallowed thickly, disarmed by her sudden closeness.

“You still feel a bit warm,” she said and then held up her tote bag. “I thought I’d make you dinner.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he muttered, confused by her odd generosity. 

“I want to! You obviously work so hard and no one can live off of takeout.”

Graves frowned, wishing he could contradict her, but he had certainly planned on ordering takeout yet again. 

“I like to cook,” she said brightly, emptying the contents of her bag on the counter. 

Graves offered to help, but she shooed him away, pouring him a glass of the wine she had brought with her and instructing him to relax. Graves obliged, gripping the stem of one of his never used wineglasses and watching her flit around, chattering about this and that. Queenie had a lot to say about the city, about how fast the trains were and how wonderful the shops on Madison Avenue were. Graves did a lot of nodding and hmm’ing which seemed to suit her fine. He watched her sear a thick steak in one of his cast iron skillets, dribbling butter and rosemary over the sizzling meat.

“I don’t think I’ve ever used that,” he remarked idly. “The pan, I mean.”

“Not much of a cook, are you?” she said with a small wink. She had great strength and dexterity in the way she tilted the heavy skillet to gather the melted butter with a spoon. “Well, I hope you like it rare.”

She served up the steak with a side of glazed carrots, looking like a five-star restaurant plate without the fussy little garnishes.

“Looks amazing,” he said truthfully, mouth watering at the tantalizing smell. “Is steak a good meal for when you’re sick? Don’t you usually make chicken soup?”

“Steak is always good,” she said, sitting across from him. “Eat up!”

But before he dug in, Graves paused.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he said, feeling strange that she had no plate in front of her.

“I ate earlier,” she said. “I’m not hungry. Go on, I don’t mind.”

Feeling a bit awkward, Graves got to work. He felt strange eating with an audience, but he couldn’t deny how deliciously seasoned and juicy it was. He’d gotten so used to eating takeout and vending machine snacks that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down for a proper meal. Graves made sure to compliment her between mouthfuls, but before he knew it, he’d cleaned his plate and Queenie was whisking it away with a glittering smile.

“At least let me clean up,” he said anxiously as she deposited his plate in the sink.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Let’s go sit.”

Graves had a curious feeling of déjà vu as he followed her into the living room. She curled up next to him on the couch and refilled his wineglass without him even asking.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” he said lightly and she giggled.

“If you get sloshed on two glasses, that would really be something.”

She was sitting very close, her bare toes brushing his ankle as if on accident. Graves took a huge gulp of wine. She had poured herself a glass but had hardly touched it.

“What do you do for work?” he asked conversationally, realizing he didn’t know.

Queenie shrugged. “This and that,” she said vaguely. “I used to design clothes.”

“Oh, is that one of your uh, things?” he asked awkwardly, gesturing to the navy blue silk that clung to her soft curves. She nodded, her smile suggestive. “It’s nice.”

“Thanks, sugar,” she said, playing with the stem of her wineglass. “Wanna go to bed?”

Graves was sure he was turning red now, his mouth opening and no sound coming out.

“Sorry for being forward, but sometimes you need to say what you want, don’t you think?” She laid a soft, cool hand on his arm and Graves swallowed.

“Yeah, OK. Yes, let’s go.”

In the bedroom, Queenie wasted no time. She all but shoved Graves onto the bed and climbed on top of him, pulling open his buttons. 

“Do you – do you want the light on?” he asked breathlessly. She was on him so fast that he hadn’t even gotten a chance to find the switch.

“Nah, I’ve got excellent night vision,” she said, her cold, nimble fingers already tugging at his belt. 

Graves found himself mostly naked so quick that he felt dizzy and Queenie pulled that clinging dress over her head, silk the color of deep midnight. Beneath it she wore nothing, and her body was so pale it seemed to glow in the dusky gloom. The only light came from beneath the door to the living room and the shimmery lights of the city through his window. 

“Don’t be scared, honey,” she said, voice low and husky.

“I’m not scared,” Graves muttered, but his heart was hammering. 

She trailed kisses down his chest and he tried to sit up, to kiss her, to touch her, but she pushed him back. She was strong, very strong, and Graves had a sudden vision of her hands on his wrists, tight as vices. He gasped, mind whirling. His briefs were dragged off and tossed aside and she stroked his half-hard cock. Graves groaned, wishing he could see her better in the shifting shadows. Her hands were so cold that his cock felt especially hot against her skin and he couldn’t help but squirm.

“You smell so good,” she muttered, voice strained.

The shock of her cold, slick tongue on his thigh made him jump. Queenie giggled against him, hand sneaking up to hold him down by the hip, thumb digging into skin. Graves didn’t know what was happening but he felt a surge of adrenaline all the same. Yet his limbs felt heavy and slow and even when Queenie grazed his inner thigh with blunt teeth he couldn’t sit up. Her hand was still loosely stroking his cock.

“What are you doing?” he managed to choke out.

“Trust me, sweetie,” she whispered. “You’ll be fine.” And she bit down.

Graves yelped at the sudden shock of pain, but he still lay there. Her teeth were not hard and blunt, but slid into his skin with sharp, razor fine ease. He could feel the blood dribble from the wound but Queenie was quick to lap it up. She held him still firmly by the hip, her small hand exerting bruising force. Her other hand worked at his erection, which hadn’t flagged in the slightest.

“Stop,” he muttered weakly, voice cracking. “Please, stop.”

Queenie eased off a fraction, her eyes seeming to glint supernaturally in the dark. Her tongue still dragged across the wound, gathering the beads of blood that bubbled to the surface. “Don’t fret, baby. I just had a little sip.”

Graves, weirdly, was not reassured. He tried to lift his head, but he felt drunk. Surely he was hallucinating. Surely this wasn’t really happening.

“Oh, I’m real,” she said with a giggle. He could see the blood shining on her lips. It looked black in the darkness. “I’m very real.”

She was still pumping his aching cock; her hand seemed to have warmed from contact with his skin. Then she sucked the head into her mouth. Graves made a high-pitched gasping sound, like he would when getting into an ice cold shower. Her mouth, warmed slightly from his blood, still felt alarmingly cold on his burning cock. She swallowed him deep, then eased back to tease the tip with her tongue. Graves whined, twisting his hips in some contradictory effort to both get away and rock closer, but she held him in place and Graves was more disoriented than ever.

“Fuck,” he breathed, the electric pleasure of her mouth making it harder than ever to think. Even the dull ache of the wound on his thigh couldn’t bother him. In fact, it seemed to make the pleasure more intense.

It wasn’t long before Graves bucked helplessly into her mouth, balls tightening as he came so hard that bright white lights burst in his vision. Afterward, the force of his orgasm left him both faint and nauseous. It was minutes before he realized Queenie was licking his inner thigh again.

“What the fuck,” he exclaimed, voice sounding pathetically high-pitched.

“Shh,” she said gently between licks. “I’m helping it heal. It’s deeper than last time, though. It’ll leave a mark.”

Graves could think of nothing to say to that. His brain felt like mush. Queenie climbed up the bed, body long and sinuous like an albino panther's. Her skin was cold and soft as snow as she fit herself carefully around him, arms encircling his chest.

“You’re so warm, it’s lovely,” she muttered sleepily, nuzzling his neck.

Intellectually, Graves knew he should try and get away. He had a healthy sense of self-preservation, he thought. But he didn’t move. He was tired to his bones and Queenie was petting his hair with a soft, cool hand. It was much easier to let himself drift off to sleep, Queenie holding him in a gently crushing embrace.

 

Graves woke with a start, having no idea where or when he was. He lurched up, despite every bone and muscle in his body aching like he’d run a marathon. But he was just in his own bed in his own apartment and after several seconds frantic fumbling for his phone, realized that it was Saturday. Graves flopped backwards on the bed, heart pounding. Slowly, like how a lake of ice begins to crack, Graves recalled the previous evening.

Hands icy with dread, Graves threw back the covers. He was naked, but what immediately caught his eye and sent his heart into thunderous palpitations were the rusty brown stains on the white sheets, unmistakably dried blood. There were only a few drops but they stood out starkly against the papery white. Graves examined his inner thigh and sure enough were two punctures, looking very much like the track marks he’d seen on the bodies of dead junkies. But the wound did not look fresh, like he’d received it only hours before, but as if it had been healing for at least a week. Graves was very certain it hadn’t been there before last night and he could still recall the stab of pain as Queenie had sunk her teeth into him.

Cold sweat bathed his forehead. It was entirely ridiculous. Graves did not believe in the supernatural. He was a very rational person. But he had also seen human bite marks dug into the dead skin of breasts and buttocks and collarbones. The marks on his thigh did not resemble them at all and the piercing feel of her teeth on his thigh was not what he imagined blunt human teeth would feel like.

Stubborn to the end, Graves grabbed a robe and hobbled into the kitchen. He felt weak and utterly drained, and, although he had been planning to head into the precinct to do extra work on his day off, he was grateful for a few extra hours to prepare. The kitchen was spotless, cleaner than when it was just him using it, and Graves knew it had been a mess after Queenie had cooked for him the night before. On the counter he found two plastic pill bottles, a single brownie on a plate wrapped in plastic, and a note scribbled on the pad of paper he used for phone messages. 

__

I left one of my famous brownies you liked so much, some Tylenol and iron pills. Please take them, you'll feel much better. There’s also orange juice in the fridge.

\- Q xox

Graves examined the things she had left for him and although he couldn’t imagine why she’d want to poison him, he couldn’t bring himself to follow her instructions. Instead, he filled his coffee machine with grounds and water and set it to brew.

As he retrieved the morning paper from his doorstep, Graves glanced down the hall to where he knew Queenie lived. Her door looked quiet and innocuous, the same as all the others. His skin itching, Graves shut his door before he locked, deadbolted and threw up the chain.

He flicked past the front page’s disheartening stories about politics and corruption, wondering why he even bothered with the news when it only made him depressed. There, below the fold on page two was the headline, “NO LEADS IN THE HUNT FOR THE CENTRAL PARK VAMPIRE.” Below was a pointless rehashing of the known facts, littered with puns, the reporter going out of her way to skewer the police for their continued incompetence. It was another piece of garbage journalism to make Graves’s blood pressure soar, but the blatant barbs at his colleagues wasn’t what made his heart beat harder. The word “vampire” in bold sans serif text seemed to catch in his mind like a fish hook through flesh. It made the tender skin on his inner thigh itch and his throat go dry and scratchy.

Graves tossed the offending paper away and poured himself hot black coffee, then proceeded to scald his mouth in his haste to gulp it down and rid the cobwebs from his mind. After a breakfast of dry cereal since he was, as usual, without milk, Graves took a lingering shower and finally managed to shave. But even after the coffee and food, he did not feel energized. In fact, his hand shook so badly he nicked himself with the razor more than a few times. Annoyed with himself, he slapped his stinging face with aftershave, savoring the fresh waves of pain.

At the precinct, he found that he wasn’t the only person pulling overtime. Tina especially seemed determined to make progress, even if it was just going over the same information again and again. Feeling more unsociable than usual, Graves sequestered himself with the stack of autopsy reports, determined not to speak to anyone more than strictly necessary.

The details from the coroner were the same as the last time he had reviewed them. But if he was looking at them now with new eyes, he pretended it wasn’t because of Queenie. The coroner had not included anything like twin needle marks or teeth impressions of any kind. In fact, she had noted in that coolly professional tone, it was difficult to determine what exactly had made the fatal wounds. Perhaps, she theorized, it had been a claw hammer, used to rip the flesh from the victims’ throats. A great deal of blood had been lost and was not found in abundance at the crime scene, leading one to believe they had been killed elsewhere.

Graves felt a chill settle over him. _Blood._ His inner thigh prickled and he fought the urge to rub at it. He drummed his fingers restlessly, suddenly feeling like there was something under his skin, determined to rip him apart. He needed to take a walk.

It was freezing and while the sidewalks were mostly clear, the dirty slush was still ankle-deep at every crosswalk. The park was comparatively empty, populated by joggers, dog-walkers and tourists bundled in puffy jackets. Graves and the rest of the task force had surmised that their perp was laying low because of the weather, but then again, he had dodged every other attempt to make sense of his movements. Frowning, Graves shielded his face with the collar of his overcoat, huddling beneath an overpass to escape the wind. 

The excursion was as pointless as any, but it felt better than combing through the same information for the third time. Despite his many layers, Graves soon became chilled to the bone. Deciding there was no real point to hanging around, he headed home. He felt shivery and cold even on the subway train pumped full of hot air and he was markedly weaker than usual, finding himself out of breath as he climbed the stairs from underground to street level. By the time he made it home, it was dusk. He collapsed on the couch, vaguely thinking about how he should feed himself, but unable to work up the energy. He was drifting off, overcome with exhaustion, when a knock on the door startled him.

Cold prickles of sweat immediately popped out on his forehead and his senses were on high alert. He got to his feet and saw just what he expected through the peephole: Queenie looking pale and unearthly and creepily non-threatening.

“Hey, neighbor!” she called brightly through the door. “I know you’re in there,” she said with a little less cheer when he didn’t answer.

He cracked open the door, unable to stop himself. “Do you want something?” he said in his coolest tone.

“Working on a Saturday? For shame, Percival,” she remarked cheerfully, pushing past him with enough force to sideline him into the wall.

Graves cursed inwardly, wishing he hadn’t given into his bravado and actually kept the chain on the door. Queenie waltzed into the kitchen like she had lived there for years and exclaimed dramatically over the brownies and pill bottles still sitting on the counter.

“You didn’t take an iron pill? No wonder you look so pale,” she turned to him with a disappointed frown and Graves bristled.

“I didn’t – you _bit_ me –“

“It was only a tiny bite!”

“You – you –“ Graves could only sputter, all his usual eloquence forgotten.

Now that she stood before him, he took in her deathly pale skin, her colorless cheeks and the unnatural chill that seemed to emanate from her. His mind spun in ludicrous directions and soon The Central Park Vampire sprung into his mind, etched in those bold, ink black letters of newsprint. 

“Excuse you, I am _not!_ ” Queenie exclaimed, sounding deeply offended. “And that’s a ridiculous name.”

Graves stared at her dumbly. He was very certain he hadn’t said anything out loud.

“Yeah, yeah, you didn’t say anything, but I can still hear you,” Queenie said impatiently, waving her hand at him. “For goodness sake!”

Graves opened his mouth and then closed it again, thinking. Queenie glared at him as though he was being very obnoxious at a dinner party she had arranged.

“You’re a vampire,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but I did not kill those poor people in Central Park,” she said defiantly, crossing her arms. “Attacking strangers and leaving their bodies in the bushes? I would _never._ ”

“You’re telling me that someone else is ripping people’s throats out?” Graves said irritably.

“I’m flattered that you think I’m one of a kind, sugar, but there’s more out there like me,” she said with a small grin. “Whoever’s responsible for those bodies is terribly rude, if you ask me.”

“Rude?” Graves repeated faintly, hardly able to believe his ears. “ _Rude._ Fucking hell.”

Graves needed to sit down. He collapsed on one of the spindly stools at the kitchen counter, head cradled in his palm. Queenie approached him with catlike stealth and he didn’t even detect her proximity until her small hand slid up his thigh.

“I forgive you for jumping to conclusions, honey,” she said in her smooth, seductive voice. She leaned in, lips brushing his jaw.

He jumped up, heart thudding. He thought wildly of his handcuffs and gun, locked securely in the safe in his closet. Queenie was advancing on him like a lioness.

“Oh honey, a gun wouldn’t really help you now,” she said with a mock pout. “And I won’t hurt you. Not much.”

She had crowded him up against the fridge. Graves could feel his small array of magnets press into his back, some of them clattering off onto the floor. Queenie had caged him properly, hands on his shoulders, pinning him where he stood with frightening strength.

Fear made sweat prickle on his neck but Graves was not a man who showed fear easily. He kept his face impassive, even as Queenie leaned in to sniff at his throat, pressing her body fully against him.

“Golly, you smell delicious,” Queenie muttered, face pressed in the crook of his neck.

“I’m not – I’m not a pie,” Graves muttered stiffly.

“No, but I could just eat you up –“ she nipped at his throat with blunt teeth and Graves jerked in surprise, adrenaline surging through him.

Queenie giggled, turning her bite into a soft nuzzle. 

“If I wanted to kill you, it would be easy,” she said, soft and cool on his overheated skin.

With one hand, she kept him pinned to the fridge, while the other drifted down his front, skirted over his belt to fondle the half-hard cock in his trousers. 

“I could drain you dry in thirty seconds, if I wanted to.”

It was curious how that statement didn’t seem to quell his erection in the slightest. In fact, Graves let out a low moan, hips bucking forward into her palm. He had never considered fear to be an aphrodisiac.

Her blunt teeth nibbled along his collarbone, making him gasp. He twisted uselessly against her grip on his arm, hand working slow and steady at his cock hardening in his pants. Her hair had the cold, clean smell of winter nights. He could see blurry gold strands shimmer at the edges of his vision as her body bumped and moved against his. She had intoxicated him again, and it hadn’t even been hard.

The bite came slowly as Queenie sunk her teeth into the curve of flesh where his neck met his shoulder. Graves emitted a shuddering moan that sounded like the very aching pain and pleasure racing through him. It was excruciating, there was no denying it, but his cock was throbbing, leaking a damp patch into his underwear as she rubbed at him. She suckled lightly, like she had at his thigh, easing off to lick leisurely at the wound as the blood flow slowed to a light trickle. Graves was slumped against the fridge, held up merely by Queenie’s strong grip on his arm. He felt dizzy, his mouth cottony and dry.

“Oh honey, this is why you should have taken that iron pill,” she cooed, hand leaving the front of his pants to tuck under his arm, supporting him as he leaned into her. 

“You could always just – just not bite me,” Graves said weakly, having no choice but to let her support him.

“Hush now, I’ll look after you,” she said softly, helping him to his room, bearing his weight on her shoulders easily.

In his bedroom, Queenie helped him collapse on the bed. She disappeared, then returned with a tall glass of orange juice and some pills.

“Here, take these,” she said and Graves managed to sit up enough to take a long drink and swallow the offered pills without question.

Queenie sat beside him, petting his hair fondly. Graves could not deny how nice it felt and he squirmed a bit under her touch. He couldn’t say exactly how long he had been celibate, whenever it was that his last girlfriend had walked out on him. It was long enough ago that Graves couldn’t recall the exact date. Queenie’s cool hand felt delicious on his forehead and he let her stroke him, hand drifting down his chest to where his heart still thumped hard through his dress shirt. Graves felt himself twist towards her almost without meaning to. He was already feeling better, sort of soft and floating. Her chilly fingers skimmed the still healing wound on his neck, eliciting a fresh shock of pain. His cock twitched eagerly in his pants. He squinted blearily up at her, seeing her coy half-smile as she slung a leg over his torso to straddle him. Graves moaned openly, thrusting up to rub against her as she rolled her hips.

“Promise I’ll be gentle, sugar,” she said, baring herself in one smooth pull of her lilac silk dress.

She stripped him slowly, her hands cool and teasing like icy butterflies fluttering over his skin. The cold clutch of her cunt made him shiver and then moan, writhing under the powerful clasp of her thighs as she rode him. She seemed to enjoy keeping him on the edge, taking her own pleasure as she drew out his orgasm until he cursed and thrashed and then begged and she bent her head, licking a stripe up the side of his neck, sucking at the bite mark to squeeze a few drops of blood from the wound and then finally letting him fall into a crashing orgasm that left him dazed and shaking. 

Afterwards, she curled around him like a cat, wiping the sweaty hair off his forehead with a wonderfully cool hand. It was easy just to let her fuss over him, easier than doing anything other than fall into an exhausted sleep. He heard her soft voice in his head, following him to his dreams.

 

Graves awoke Sunday morning feeling hungover, but not as dreadfully as before. On a usual weekend, he might have gone to work again, tried to squeeze in a few more hours of toil. But he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. So, after his shower and breakfast of burnt toast and scalding coffee, Graves threw on his sweats to march across the hall and hammer on Queenie’s door.

She didn’t answer for a long while, but Graves didn’t relent. When the door finally cracked open, she peered at him through the tiny sliver looking annoyed.

“I was sleeping,” she said in a slightly less smooth tone than usual.

“Let me in, Queenie,” he said firmly.

She glared at him for a few long moments before disappearing to close the door and unhook the chain. The door opened again just enough for him to squeeze in and she snapped it shut the moment he cleared the threshold.

“Thanks,” he muttered, trying as hard as he possibly could not to be antagonistic. Her apartment was pitch black despite it not even being midday and Graves blinked against the oppressive darkness. “Could you – could you turn on a light, maybe?”

Queenie sighed dramatically as though he had demanded she give him her kidney. “Let me find some candles,” she said gruffly. After a lot of rustling sounds in the velvety darkness, the room was finally illuminated with flickering candlelight. Queenie used the single taper to light more candles, votives and thick pillars, casting a dim shivering light over the space.

Graves saw old-fashioned furniture on a thick Persian rug, end tables cluttered with knickknacks, vases of dried flowers, ornate picture frames in impressive numbers. Queenie herself wore a Chinese silk robe printed with blue peacocks. 

“Miss me already, sweetheart?” she said sweetly, perching herself on the chintz sofa, inviting him to sit with a little pat of her hand on the stiff cushions.

“I just wanted to clear some things up,” Graves said, trying to ignore the expanse of marble white thigh she had exposed, and sat beside her.

“Fire away, honey,” she said, after stifling a wide yawn. “I’m all ears.”

“You’re a vampire,” he said calmly as he could manage. She merely stared at him, as though he were stating the incredibly obvious. “But if you didn’t kill those people in Central Park, who did?”

Queenie rolled her eyes, tucking a foot beneath her and revealing even more thigh than Graves found strictly necessary. “How should I know? You’re the detective, not me.”

Graves accepted that without comment, for the time being at least. He scratched at the wound on his neck, wondering if the scars would fade over time or if he’d always be sporting vampiric bite marks.

“Don’t sweat it, darling. They’ll go away eventually,” Queenie chimed in, plucking the question from his head just like before.

“How did –“

“It’s a vampire thing,” she said with a saucy wink and then scooted close, running a hand through his hair. “There’s no need to be so squirrelly,” she said when he tensed.

“And if you bite me again?”

“Nah, I couldn’t take another drink so soon,” she said casually, leaning close to brush her lips over his neck all the same. “Don’t want to make you sick.”

“I appreciate that,” Graves mumbled, shivering at her touch, cold as stone, but smooth and soft as silk.

“No need to fight me, Percival,” she whispered near enough to his ear that he trembled. He knew he was blushing and hoped the light was dim enough to obscure the pink in his cheeks. “You were rude enough to wake me, the least you could do is keep me company.”

Graves let his head fall back as her lips teased the sensitive, torn skin of his throat, hand snaking past the collar of his shirt to ghost over his chest. Just then, his phone pinged loudly in his pocket. They both jumped, startled by the sudden noise. Graves pulled it out, squinting at the sudden blinding brightness of the screen in the dim, antiquated room. It was Picquery. 

“Yeah?” he answered, trying not to sound too annoyed.

“Graves,” she said and her tone was so solemn that Graves immediately sat up straighter. “We’ve got another one, in the bushes north of the Lake.”

“Fuck,” Graves swore, feeling like her words had punched him in the gut. He told her he’d be there immediately and hung up. He turned to Queenie, who only looked a little disappointed.

“Go on,” she said, disentangling herself from him.

Graves went to stand, but then hesitated. “Do you – do you think it’s another vampire, killing these people?” he asked cautiously. 

Instead of shrugging dismissively, Queenie looked thoughtful. “Seems possible, from what the papers say,” she said eventually and the sinking feeling in his stomach intensified.

“How am I supposed to arrest a vampire?” he said, feeling suddenly helpless.

Queenie looked sideways at him, grey-green eyes filled with concern. “You don’t, you’d have to kill them. Oh, don’t give me that look.”

Graves, who had reacted with revulsion, simply frowned.

“Stake through the heart, sunlight, fire, the usual ways,” Queenie rattled off, reading his mind again in that unsettling manner. “But if they’ve avoided detection this long…”

She trailed off as Graves finally stood, wishing very intensely that this wasn’t his current reality.

“Good luck,” she said cheerfully and Graves nodded stiffly, careful to open the door as little as possible as he left, remembering what she had just told him about sunlight.

 

The body, tucked under a tangle of bushes by the water, was that of a pale young man with dark hair. His throat had been ripped out, like all the others. He’d been hidden away behind the snowdrifts, covered in low branches, inconspicuous in the early morning until a pack of toy poodles had found him while looking for a pee spot and their walker had called 911 in a panic. She was still hunched over in the back of an ambulance, breathing shallowly into an oxygen mask, Mylar blanket thrown over her shoulders like a cape.

Graves squatted over the ground, taped off with bright yellow as the crime scene photographer snapped away, bathing everything periodically in bright flashes of light. With his tie tucked into his shirt, Graves leaned over to examine the man’s hands. They looked clean. No flesh or blood from clawing at his attacker. But Graves knew firsthand how silent and stealthy his killer would have been, he would have never known they were right behind him until the teeth sunk into his neck. Seeing it now with Queenie’s words still fresh in his mind, he could tell how violent the attack had been, how it barely resembled the two little puncture wounds hidden safely under his own collar. He scratched unconsciously at it, skin prickling.

“Where do you think he kills them?” Tina mused, using a pen to lift open the young man’s jacket to peer inside. “There should be blood all over the snow.”

Indeed, the snow was mostly undisturbed. Or it had been, save for a few foot and paw prints, but now the circle around the body was trampled with dirt and mud from the procession of footfalls. Graves didn’t answer Tina’s question because he was sure now that the killer had attacked him on the path and the blood was missing for another reason entirely.

“There’s the dog-walker,” Tina continued, pointing to the small set of smudged sneaker prints. “The perp should be here too.”

Her brow was furrowed in consternation. Last week, Graves would have joined her in the frustration, but today all he felt was cold horror. _You don’t, you’d have to kill them._

Picquery was waiting for them to debrief so she could give a short statement to the press. She took in their total lack of good news with a grim determination and then told them to get going to interview the victim’s family.

Graves drove as Tina flipped through a huge file on her lap, most likely cross-referencing the other victims. Graves didn’t feel it was necessary. They were picked at random, he was sure of it now. But he did not voice that to Tina. 

The victim’s foster mother lived in Harlem with her brood of young foster children. She only seemed vaguely put out that her foster son had been brutally murdered but still provided a detailed timeline as to where he had been the previous day.

“He liked to take walks at night, I don’t know,” she said in a dismissive tone when Tina questioned why he had been in the park so late. In the corner, his blonde foster sister wept silently.

While Graves didn’t think this lead would bear any fruit, he still did his due diligence, examining the young man’s spare bedroom that he apparently shared with his sisters. It was only making him more on edge, anxious to get back to Queenie and question her. He imagined her sitting in the dark, bathed in golden candlelight, her pale hair shining. Even if she claimed not to know anything, she was his best and only hope.

The rest of the day was an endless grind of gruesome activity. Graves, Tina, and the rest of the team plotted out every second of the young man’s life on the white board among the other victims and visited the coroner in the evening to hear the same bewildering details as with the others. Attacked from behind, unknown weapon, huge loss of blood.

By the end of the night, Graves was fighting a pounding headache and he seemed unable to focus on anything without squinting and shaking his head.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Tina offered gently, surrounded by a sea of files like a patchwork quilt.

“Yeah, OK,” Graves muttered, immediately gathering his things.

Tina looked surprised. She had perhaps expected him to work until he fell asleep at his desk, like usual. But Graves had more fruitful lines of inquiry to pursue and he couldn’t do so in Tina’s presence.

When he got to his building, he didn’t even drop by his own apartment, instead going straight to Queenie’s door. His banging knocks summoned her quicker than before and she answered wearing a cream silk dress with black panels and a delighted smile. She ushered him in, taking his coat for him and hanging it by the door. Her apartment was bright with what must have been dozens of candles. She had obviously been waiting for him.

“I’d offer you a drink, but all I have is pig’s blood,” she said with a little laugh.

“It’s fine,” Graves muttered. “I need your help.”

Queenie have him a quizzical look. “I’m not a detective, Percival…”

“No, but I don’t know what I’m looking for here and you do.”

She was silent for a moment, hand on his shoulder. Her smooth fingers pulled at his tie, undoing the buttons at his throat, loosening his collar. “It isn’t safe,” she finally said, eyes huge and flickering in the candlelight.

“My job isn’t safe,” he countered. “I’m used to it.”

“This is different,” she insisted. “You can’t slap cuffs on him and call it a day…”

Graves caught her slip immediately and grabbed the hand tickling the hollow of his throat with cold fingers. “Him? You know who it is, don’t you?”

Queenie was very carefully not looking at him. “I may have poked around a bit…”

“Queenie, he needs to be stopped.” Graves could feel the blood in his veins, his pulse quickening. 

“You don’t think I know that?” she said with a frown. “But you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Then tell me,” he said, cupping her jaw so that she was forced to look at him. For a long minute she just stared at him, her eyes looking deep and liquid, glistening in the shuddering light.

“C’mere,” she said finally, tugging on his tie to make him follow.

He sat on the couch beside her, her cold fingers curling around his wrist. Her proximity was reminding him of things, shivery memories of her hands warming on his hot skin, her tongue dragging along a fresh wound with aching pleasure. Graves longed to shake himself bodily, to clear his head of the distracting memories as Queenie turned to a side table where a number of picture frames stood like rows of soldiers. 

“Here,” she said finally, extracting a tryptic frame from its fellows. 

The photos were old, faded, sepia-colored. Queenie pointed at the middle picture and Graves squinted in the dim light. It was clearly a scene staged in a studio and Graves saw a figure that was surely Queenie, looking almost exactly the same. She stood beside a tall man with a pale mustache and undercut, hands tucked into an immaculately tailored waistcoat. His cold eyes made Graves’s skin crawl even from the milky, yellowed world of the past.

“Gellert Grindelwald,” Queenie announced.

“Huh?”

“That’s his name,” she said. “I thought he went back to Europe, but I heard through the grapevine that he’s back in New York. All this business with ripping out throats sounds exactly like him. He can be a bit savage.”

The images of the young man’s body, the torn flesh of his throat, blackening in the cold air, were still fresh and potent in Graves’s mind. A bit savage, he thought, was an understatement.

“He made me,” Queenie continued. “Into this.”

It took a moment for Graves to realize what she meant. He glanced at her, her expression impassive as her eyes fixed on the old pictures.

“Oh, look,” she said, pointing at one of the photos beside that of herself and Grindelwald. A cheerfully smiling rotund man stood arm in arm with Queenie’s younger self.

She was smiling in the present too as she went back to the end table cluttered with pictures and extracted another frame. This one was an ornate, tarnished silver, diptych. On one side was a very vintage looking wedding scene and the other bore an invitation on yellowed paper, the curling script faded but legible. The wedding scene featured Queenie in a sleek, flowing sea of lace smiling demurely beside the chubby man from the other picture in a fine, dark suit.

“My first husband, Jacob,” Queenie said fondly, finger tracing the elaborate frame.

“He a vampire too?” Graves asked.

“Oh goodness, no,” Queenie said with a little laugh. “Most people would rather not be.”

Graves had to wonder if she would rather not have been, but he didn’t pry. His eyes fell on the invitation opposite the picture. 

__

Queenie Goldstein  
&  
Jacob Kowalski  
May 9th, 1926

“Goldstein,” Graves repeated thoughtfully. “My partner’s name is Goldstein.”

“Oh really? Maybe we’re related!” she said brightly, gathering the picture frames to replace them on the end table. “There’s definitely a few of my descendants left in the city.”

“Could I have that picture? Of Grindelwald?” he asked as she went about carefully making space for them among the many others.

“Sure, I guess,” she said, popping open the clasps and removing the cardboard backing. “I hope you’re not thinking of printing it in the papers.”

“Of course not,” he muttered. He stared hard at the picture, committing the man’s features to memory.

“He’s very dangerous,” Queenie told him plainly as he tucked the old picture into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Wooden stake to the heart,” he recited, already imagining how he would do it. “Sunlight. Fire seems easiest, don’t you think?”

“He’s very old and very strong,” Queenie told him firmly.

“You’re strong.”

“He’s stronger,” she said exasperated. “He’d rip you apart and enjoy it.”

“I can’t – I can’t just do nothing,” he said haltingly, wishing that she could understand. He thought of his last girlfriend, who had walked out on him after four years. She had never been able to comprehend why his job had dominated his life, why he couldn’t just turn it off when he walked through the door. She had wanted him all to herself, she didn’t want to share him with the bodies in the morgue and their killers who still walked the streets.

He looked at Queenie imploringly and her expression was soft. She pushed a hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck in a way that made him feel strangely calm and comforted.

“Of course not,” she said in a low voice and leaned in to press a cool kiss to his cheek. “You must be exhausted.”

“It’s dark, this is when he’d be out –“

“He won’t kill again for a few days at least, you need sleep.”

“Queenie –“ 

“Hush, I’m putting you to bed. In the meantime, I’ve got a few old friends to visit.”

Graves finally relented, caving under Queenie's gentle petting of his head and neck. She gave his neck a soft nuzzle, sending a shiver down his spine.

“Don’t worry about a thing, sweetie,” she said, helping him off the couch. “I’ve got your back.”

 

It was just before dawn when Queenie woke him, gently jostling him when she crawled into bed next to him. She had led him to her bed hours earlier, tucking the smooth linen sheets tight around him as he sunk into the pillows with their cases trimmed in eyelet lace. He had fallen asleep almost immediately, tired to his bones. 

“What’s happening?” he mumbled sleepily as her icy skin slid teasingly along his side, sheathed only in cool silk.

“I’ve got a lead,” she whispered softly, mouth close to his ear.

Graves tried to sit up, but Queenie held him down gently by the shoulder.

“Nothing we can do about it now, it’s getting light,” she said, hand sliding over his bare chest to cuddle close. “Go back to sleep.”

Now that he was awake, that was easier said than done. And while he knew she was right, it was hard to just lay there and do nothing. Queenie, however, was falling asleep quickly with her head on his chest, body curled close around him. Makes sense, he thought. It was her bedtime after all.

When he could no longer lay still in the dark, her cool arms warming gently from contact with his skin, Graves slipped out from under her grip and went about finding his discarded clothes in the dark. He used the light from his phone to see. As he went to leave, he let the soft blue patch of light fall over Queenie on the bed, illuminating her deathly pale skin in cold light. 

While asleep, Queenie truly did seem dead. There was no breath to disturb her chest and she lay utterly still, cold as stone and only barely visible to him in the dark bedroom. But she was still perfect, untouched by the injury or decay that had characterized almost every dead body he’d seen in person. It was disconcerting, strange and alluring.

But he could not linger. Graves let himself out, and went back to his place to shower and get ready for the day. It was strange, arriving at the precinct, to see the harried and discouraged expressions on everyone’s faces as they tried in vain to see something they hadn’t caught before. Graves felt more like an outsider than usual, holding this tantalizing piece of information secret in his head. The picture in his breast pocket was like a burning brand, constantly tugging at his attention as he went through the motions with Tina and Picquery. Luckily, they were used to him being taciturn and unfriendly, but as the day wore on he knew even Tina was becoming annoyed with his reticence. 

“I suppose we could just hope someone wanders into his apartment and finds a head in the fridge,” she snapped in irritation when he gave her another one word response to a probing question.

“He’s not decapitating people,” he responded, mind on the picture in his jacket rather than the case file in front of him.

“I know, I was referencing –“

“Dahmer, I know,” Graves said, not bothering to glance at her and her surely aggravated expression. “There’s something I need to do,” he announced and Tina looked astonished.

“It’s not even six!”

“It’s important,” he said evasively, already getting up to leave. It was almost dark, and that’s what mattered.

He knew Tina would be livid with him but he couldn’t seem to care, not when he needed to make it home and get Queenie to show him her lead. When he tapped on her door she answered immediately, wearing another thin silk dress, a loose coat that would have been appropriate for spring weather and laced, vintage-looking boots.

“Ready?” she said, perky as ever.

“Who is this lead?” he muttered as he followed her down the stairs and out into the cold. She did not seem bothered at all, while Graves shivered at the wind slipping through all the gaps in his coat.

“Old friend of mine,” she said brightly. “A bit kooky.”

“But they know where Grindelwald is?” he said, excitement and dread making his heart beat harder.

“He gave me an address,” she said. “Who knows if he’s even still there, but Albus swears he was a few weeks ago.” She recited an address in the west seventies.

“Upper West Side, eh?”

Queenie shrugged. “He likes luxury. So typical of him, really. I doubt he’s still there,” she told him cautiously.

They had reached the subway. Queenie fed her MetroCard through the slot with a certain flourish.

“Now, I remember when this station was brand new, it was so exciting,” she said with her customary brightness. She regaled him with tales of the old city’s past, treating the escalators to the lower levels like a great novelty. Graves found himself charmed with her earnest enthusiasm. It had been a long time since he looked at the city and saw its glitter clearly, without the rotten underbelly poking through. Her unabashed love for the city was refreshing.

When they had emerged on the other side, into the cold and blustery air, Queenie led him to a nice but unassuming building along a residential street. With his breath visible in the cold air, Graves stuck his hands deep in his pockets. Queenie looked quite unaffected, as though it was a mild spring day.

Graves was grateful for his badge, which he flashed to gain entry, although the doorman examined it for a long time, glancing doubtfully at Queenie who only smiled bright and guilelessly. He allowed them in begrudgingly and Graves followed Queenie into the elevator where she hit the button for the third floor.

“Even if he isn’t still here, there must be something to point the way to where he went,” Graves told her, because she kept throwing him skeptical looks.

“If you say so,” she said lightly.

They found the right door and knocked and knocked to no answer. After a few minutes, a neighbor from across the way emerged to see what all the banging was about.

“Do you know the man who lives here?” Graves asked her, holding up his badge.

The woman shrugged, still regarding them with suspicion. “I’ve seen him a few times, but he never introduced himself or anything. Big, blond guy.”

“Thanks,” Graves responded and waited until she had closed the door before turning to Queenie and muttering in a low voice, “How strong are you, exactly?”

Queenie absolutely beamed. She was strong enough, apparently, to break the lock on the door with a well-placed shoulder. Graves could only hope the curious neighbor wouldn’t poke her head out to investigate again.

Once inside, Graves groped at the light switch on the wall. The room was nice, but sparely decorated, in a rather old-fashioned style, like Queenie’s own apartment. The light from the brass ceiling lamp was weak and yellow, throwing weird shadows on the bare walls.

“It looks like he was here recently,” Graves announced. There was a newspaper on the coffee table and he recognized the front page bearing that morning’s headline: “THE VAMPIRE OF CENTRAL PARK STRIKES AGAIN.”

Queenie looked worried, her mouth curved into an attractive frown. “We should go,” she said in a tight voice, lingering by the door.

“No, this is good,” Graves said poking his head into the stainless steel kitchen that seemed completely untouched.

“I thought he wouldn’t still be here,” she said desperately.

Graves was just heading for the bedroom when he heard Queenie behind him let out a strangled gasp. Graves whipped around, hand automatically going for the gun in his holster, but he wasn’t quick enough. He hadn’t even heard the door open, but by the time he heard it shut, there was a strong hand wrapped around his throat.

“Queenie, my dear,” Gellert Grindelwald said, cold voice accented with something vaguely European. “You brought me takeout.”

He had hardly changed from the man in the picture. He had shaved his mustache and he wore modern clothes, but his mass of white blond hair was a wild tuft atop his head and his bulging eyes burned with a quiet fury. They were two different colors.

Graves fumbled for his gun. He knew what Queenie had said, but he couldn’t help but try for his only line of defense. Quick as lightning, Grindelwald grabbed his wrist and twisted. Graves screamed at the blinding pain as the bone snapped as easily as a breadstick. His gun clattered uselessly to the floor.

There was a pale blur and Graves saw Queenie rushing to his side, grabbing Grindelwald’s arm. With very little effort he reached out and seized her by the neck, lifting her up and then tossing her with such force that she hit the opposite wall with a sickening crunch.

“ _Queenie!_ ” Graves yelled, voice strangled by the hand squeezing his throat like a vice.

Queenie didn’t answer, slumped over, apparently stunned. Grindelwald grinned, creepy, cold and unsettling. Graves struggled feebly; trying to pry the ice cold finger from his neck was like fighting with iron bands. Grindelwald laughed coldly, lifting Graves minutely off the floor and slamming him back against the wall. Graves gasped in pain and shock, the wind briefly knocked out of him, the back of his head stinging where it had made contact with the wall. With his feet dangling inches from the ground, Graves fought to breathe, the hand pressing against his windpipe cutting off air.

Panic was making it hard to focus. He could vaguely hear Grindelwald’s cruel laughter, but his vision had become hazy. Just when he was sure he was going to pass out, the hand disappeared. Graves crashed to the floor, legs buckling under him. Blearily, Graves raised his head, trying desperately to regain his bearings even as he coughed and sputtered. Queenie stood before him like a guard dog, what looked like the broken leg of an end table in her hand. Grindelwald was rubbing the back of his head, cold rage burning in his mismatched eyes.

“You’re not strong enough to kill me,” he said with a cold sneer.

“Try me,” Queenie snarled, looking like a Grecian Fury in her pale silk dress now spotted with blood.

Graves struggled to his feet, cradling his broken wrist close to his body, the pain flaring with every small movement so intensely that he nearly doubled over again. With an inhuman roar, Grindelwald lunged at her. But armed with the table leg she met him ferociously, aiming the splintered end for his chest. Grindelwald staved her off, teeth bared as he tried to overpower her.

Briefly forgotten, Graves moved carefully along the wall, as fast as he could manage while dizzy and weak with pain. Adrenaline pounded in his veins, making his wobbly legs move despite the fear that might have incapacitated him. He headed for the kitchen and its gas-fueled range. His hands trembled as he turned each burner up to high.

“Queenie!” he yelled as loud as he could muster, voice hoarse.

There was an anguished scream. Graves stumbled wildly back toward the living room, but before he could clear the threshold Grindelwald was upon him. He grabbed Graves by the neck and threw him bodily to the ground. Graves hit the tiles with a surge of pain so intense that his vision grayed out for a moment. Then he could see Grindelwald advancing on him, eyes wild. Though he wasn't moving as quick as before, it didn't matter. Graves couldn’t get up. He couldn’t even catch his breath.

Before he could begin to panic, Grindelwald crumpled, a blow to the side of the head throwing him sideways. Queenie looked in worse shape than he did: blood on her face, limping slightly. She grabbed Grindelwald by the hair and pushed him face first into the circles of bright blue flames.

Grindelwald screamed, an inhuman, vicious sound like an animal being tortured. He thrashed, arms wheeling backwards to get at Queenie’s face and neck. But his clothes soon lit up and Queenie did not let go. His hair was on fire, the flames licking up his sides.

“Queenie,” Graves wheezed, forcing himself to stand despite the pain that nearly toppled him over again. He grabbed her hand as Grindelwald twisted, his body on fire, Queenie still holding his neck. “We need to go,” Graves said, far more calmly than he felt. Flames were crawling up the wall.

Queenie seemed at last to realize she could burn too. She let go of Grindelwald who lunged backward at them, a burning, terrifying monster. Queenie dodged him, limp pronounced as she stumbled to the door with Graves beside her while Grindelwald collapsed to the kitchen floor, flames consuming him. Graves tore his eyes away from the hideous scene, legs trembling as Queenie dragged him into the living room. By the time they made it to the hall, smoke had filled the apartment and the fire alarm had been triggered. Despite Queenie being apparently more injured, Graves still had to lean onto her shoulder as they staggered down the hall which was now filling with people as they streamed from their apartments, shock and panic in their high voices.

Even stumbling, bleeding, and with Graves resting much of his weight on her slight form, Queenie sped ahead of the panicked residents, down many flights of stairs and out onto the cold sidewalk. There, she finally buckled. Smoke was pouring from a window above them that he knew to be Grindelwald’s. Fire could kill a vampire, but just how resilient were they? He swallowed his dismay and turned to Queenie.

He had seen bodies in the morgue that looked better, mangled by car accidents and falls from buildings. Blood soaked her dress and her gold hair, her leg twisted unnaturally. The drive to get them both to safety seemed to have drained out of her and she slumped against him.

“Queenie." He could barely feel the throbbing pain in his wrist for his sudden dread.

“I’m fine,” she said in a weak voice. “I just need blood. I’ll be fine.”

“Blood,” he repeated, mouth dry.

“There’s some at home, I’m fine.”

“Pig’s blood,” he said, wetting his lips as his thoughts raced. “Human would be better.”

“No!” Queenie said in sudden alarm. “You’re wounded, I can’t –“

“I’ll be fine, the ambulance is coming,” he said firmly. He could hear the wails in the distance. “Come on.”

He helped her up, away from the horde of people who had gathered to gawk at the burning building and the occupants who had fled to safety. He tugged at his collar, baring his throat to her.

“Just take a little,” he said and Queenie shook her head. “Please.”

She felt so light in his arms, but he knew she could crush him like a tin can even while wounded. When she relented, she let her head fall on his shoulder. Her cool mouth sought his skin, lips dancing over the bite mark she had left before. He felt her teeth, but he barely registered the pain. He leaned back against the wall, legs gone wobbly, head aching from the overload of pain and fear.

The flashing red and blue lights of the ambulance swam past his vision as he closed his tired eyes. Queenie lapped at his throat as weakness stole over him. No longer holding her upright, he slumped. His last thought before unconsciousness was that at least Queenie was there to catch him.

 

“I’m glad you’re OK, Graves,” Tina told him for about the twelfth time. She had stood vigil at his bedside while he recovered from the transfusion, his wrist in a hard cast.

“Thanks, Goldstein,” he muttered. The drugs had made him woozy, but at least it killed the pain in his arm.

“Wish you had told me you had a lead,” she said only a bit petulantly and Graves gave her a small smile. “That’s a new look,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Must be the drugs. Don’t let it get stuck like that.”

Picquery had only just left, taking his statement and debriefing him. She seemed to buy his version of events, involving a tip from his neighbor Queenie about seeing Grindelwald hanging around the park, and the catastrophic confrontation involving Grindelwald burning his own apartment down. Graves had been relieved to hear that there had been no other casualties.

“There’s someone here to see you,” said a nurse, poking her head in.

Graves nodded and Queenie appeared, looking gloriously beautiful and not at all injured. Her bright smile seemed to make her glow in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

Tina gawked at her, eyebrows up by her hairline. “You’re not – didn’t you –“

“Oh, I’m fine, just needed to freshen up a tad,” she chirped and immediately went to Graves’s side, taking his hand. “Nice to see you, sugar.”

Graves smiled drowsily through the haze of drugs and he imagined Tina’s amazement that he had smiled twice in one day. “You too,” he muttered and she returned a beaming smile.

“Say,” Queenie said conversationally, turning to Tina who looked ready to slip away and give them some privacy. “Are you a Goldstein of the Brooklyn Goldsteins?”

Tina, looking taken aback, was nonetheless open to picking apart her family tree with Queenie’s eager input. Graves only half paid attention, his eyes drifting closed as the pain meds lulled him into a soothing slumber. Queenie’s cool hand never left his.


End file.
